Caring is not (an advantage)
by impampersand
Summary: Reflections of Mycroft Holmes on why caring is not an advantage, particularly in the wake of the Fall. Rule 63.


_"Caring is not an advantage."_

She knows all too precisely exactly how long ago she first said that to Sherlock, but that memory is not the one that she thinks of first. Caring is not an advantage, not for them.

Looking down at the mangled corpse of Casimir Adler, Mycroft is perfectly aware that she and Sherlock are deviations–brilliant, cold-hearted anomalies. Caring is not an advantage for a Holmes.

Mycroft isn't sure it's an advantage for anyone.

—

_"I'm not built for running."_

Even the thought of running about as Sherlock does is ludicrous. Mycroft does not care for exercise, though she does enough for sinews to remain limber, muscle and bone strong. Sherlock takes her thrills in the solving of every case's puzzle; adrenaline is useful enough and she cares enough about each solution to follow through and apprehend the perpetrator.

That is neither Mycroft's duty nor her interest. Running is to be left to Sherlock and John Watson. Politics and crime-solving can only be treated as the same when the correct Holmes attends to them.

—  
_"I believe this is your revolver, sir."_

John Watson has always hated the sometimes smug, always knowing smile that Mycroft has. It's an admission–that someone can see the world as Sherlock does, yet not often willing to translate the brilliance of the Holmes mind–that irks John.  
Sherlock knows this, and for that matter, so does Mycroft.

Everyone remembers what Sherlock is capable, her mind and the sharp angles of her body thrown violently about. When they remember that John was an army doctor, woman and soldier, they understand how she can keep up with Sherlock.  
In his well-cut suit and height, Avignon is almost expected to bodyguard as well as aide.

Nobody remembers that Sherlock's early training had to come from somewhere.

Nobody remembers, not until Mycroft has retrieved someone's gun and has it trained upon their head.

This is how Mycroft prefers it to be.

—

_"…initially, she wanted to be a pirate."_

What Mycroft can tell John is unique. Sherlock, in her isolation, is close enough to self-sufficiency that Mycroft can watch through her cameras. She works and stands by.

Lestrade is a change to the trend of people who file by their lives. Lestrade cares, and it's an oddity to them both. Sherlock leaves the cocaine behind–Lestrade offers the right incentive, and the stress of estrangement from her husband (and their children's school tuition) are enough that Mycroft can read more of her sister's life–but otherwise does not change. Her days remain filled with cases and running and violin and nicotine.

John is not Lestrade. That much should be immediately obvious. Good woman though she may be, Lestrade would never consider living with Sherlock in a semi-permanent manner. Sherlock has John dashing about London without a thought to the aches she carries (not just the phantom pains, but the lingering injuries that such serious trauma causes; shrapnel and bullet wounds do not always or often heal easily and fully) within a day.

There has never been anyone like this for Sherlock. Nor Mycroft, for that matter, but she can conceal herself within national and international governments. There will always be a distance between the Holmes family and the rest of the world; no homeless network nor Diogenes Club could cross that. Avignon neither, for all the he is Mycroft's right hand.

John alone comes closest to crossing the distance, and this is why Mycroft can tell her of both the woman who is and the child who was. Even without the overlapping childhood and subsequent years, John Watson understands Sherlock in ways that Mycroft never will.

This is why Mycroft tells John of her sister.

—

The neatly-coiffed hair Mummy always had is the only thing Mycroft inherited from her. Everything else–mannerisms, affectations, penchant for well-tailored clothing–Mycroft had was shaped to be so. Sherlock's hair is an eternal riot of curls, occasionally gathered by Watson's patient hand into a long braid, or a low-riding bun safely away from volatile laboratory chemicals.

Mycroft's hair is always neatly pinned back, controlled fury. Even with the stretch of government work beyond the typical 9 to 5, Avignon has never seen anything less than immaculacy. Even during the scandal in Belgravia, when Mycroft sits and thinks for long hours with a drink in her hand, Mycroft's hair remains flawless.

At least her hair, unlike her waistline and bust, never betrays her stresses and the stretch of work hours into the night.

—

_"Hello sister dear. How are you?"_

A Holmes, no matter how brilliant, cannot always accomplish what they must alone. This is why Mycroft has Avignon and Sherlock has John.

This is why Sherlock has Mycroft.

—

_"I'll be 'mother.'"_

_"And that is a whole childhood in a nutshell."_

It's an odd thought to strike in the midst of pouring tea, but that is not a deterrent to the thought. Sherlock's early memories are of a parade of nurses with forgotten (deleted) features and Mycroft shuffling her about, because Sherlock was not the kind of child that simply anyone could handle.

Of those same years Mycroft remembers her own tutors and baby-soft Sherlock. Between lessons Mycroft would check in with Sherlock, teaching the same puzzles that had helped contain her own mind when she'd been little. Mummy was a distant, elegant figure–not as distant as in Sherlock's memories, or had Sherlock already deleted that?–white string of pearls at princess length around her neck.

Even now Mycroft does not know exactly what Mummy did, only that there was an 'm' involved. It is not necessary for them to know how she died, though enough can be read into her death in Scotland and the cremated remains that were delivered to Mycroft.

Mycroft was never Mummy, but some years she might well have been.

Her painted smile remains in place as she continues to pour the tea.

—

_"All my instincts are against this explanation, and yours too, I think. We are not sisters for nothing."_

—

Mycroft folds herself into a black knit dress, smooths it down over stockings and slip, combs order into her hair. She pins it up, then sets the curls free. She pins them up again.

She draws on a comfortably thick pea coat and buttons it down, collects purse and umbrella. Avignon is waiting in the front hall when she finally descends. He opens the door for her and locks it behind them. He drives her to the graveyard, so she has time to watch the overcast sky. There is nothing that the sky tells her.

The rain begins to fall as she steps out from the car and opens her umbrella overhead. Avignon stays with the car. The churchyard is silent and gray, the grass underfoot halfway yellowed and dead. The headstone is still-shining black marble.

Sherlock has nothing to say, nor Mycroft.

—

"Caring is not an advantage," she murmurs, and wants to weep and rage.

Sherlock is the only thing she ever cared for, and look where that's got her now?

—

_'Look at them. They all care so much. Do you ever wonder if there's something wrong with us?'_

_'All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.'_


End file.
